Cornelius Eady

Don’t Bum Out the Musicians
August 21, 2011 Eady Cornelius

Don’t Bum Out the Musicians

 

Ah, behold, how hot tears
Roll down pale cheeks

Johann Sebastian Bach
Ascension Oratorio, Cantata No. 11

 

At St. Paul’s church, the musicians have heard it all.
For years, they have paused between Bach movements to hear the strange reed of a human voice recite grief.

Watch out, the poetry director gently warns me.
This church across the street from where the towers fell
is busy with Spring.

What shall I wring from my throat?
Won’t the tenor later sing
Ah, just stay, my dearest life

What has been whispered, wailed before
My arrival? Gone, I figure,
Worse than gone.

When the tower fell, just before the tower fell,
The lives, trapped between the flames
And the window.

Your farewell and your early departure

 

For J. Chester Johnson

 

Cornelius Eady, poet and co-founder of Cave Canem, has published more than half a dozen volumes of poetry, among them Victims of the Latest Dance Craze (1985), winner of the Lamont Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets; The Gathering of My Name (1991), nominated for a Pulitzer Prize; and Brutal Imagination (2001), a National Book Award finalist. Hardheaded Weather: New and Selected Poems appeared in 2008. Cornelius Eady is the author of eight books of poetry, including Hardheaded Weather: New and Selected Poems. His second book, Victims of the Latest Dance Craze, won the Lamont Prize from the Academy of American Poets, and  Brutal Imagination was a finalist for the National Book Award. His work in theater includes the libretto for an opera, “Running Man,” which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama in 1999. His play “Brutal Imagination” won Newsday’s Oppenheimer award.